


Change and thrill

by SympatriCuckoo



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Essay, Gen, Meta, dry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SympatriCuckoo/pseuds/SympatriCuckoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.”<br/>-Emil Cioran</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change and thrill

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: I slept through philosophy, so this will likely make real philosophers cringe. It will make everyone else cry of boredom.

     Godhead is a term to describe the state of divinity that is possessed by a being. In turn, divinity is an attribute or a set of attributes that are considered to be superior to that of mortal beings. Classically, one such attribute is omniscience, or literally “all knowledge”, and is itself the subject of much debate in philosophical circles. For instance, can god's have beliefs, since belief necessitates a degree of uncertainty? If gods can have beliefs, what are the requirements for the formation of said beliefs? What degree of uncertainty is acceptable for omniscience: is it permissible for a god to know literally everything, both actual and possible? Does a god merely know everything that occurred in the past and is occurring in the present, or does a god also know the future? From what has been seen from the game, it would appear that the Outsider has limited omniscience, with perfect knowledge of the past and present, but limited when concerning the future and non-existent when concerning his own meddling. It is this uncertainty that makes his life interesting.

 

     From what players have learned from conversation with the Outsider, it is that he is blessed/cursed with perfect knowledge of both the past and the present, including all possibilities that people can take. There are two possible conclusions that can be drawn from this: one is that the Outsider is time itself; the second is that the Outsider occupies a position outside of time. The former conclusion is inherently false. If the Outsider is Time, then he should lack the ability to use past and future tenses; since time wouldn't be merely discrete segments that are finite, the Outsider would exist in the moment of past, present and future with no distinctions between the three. But it is clear from the Outsider's monologues that he uses tenses quite freely. As such, one can proceed with second possibility.

 

     The Outsider occupies a realm known as the Void, in which the player can visit scenes that have occurred in the past and will occur in the future. When visiting the Void for the first time as Corvo Attano, the player can visit the gazebo and see the corpse of Jessamine Kaldwin (the past), the Golden Cat and see Emily and the Pendleton twins (the present) and the safe house of Hiram Burrows, which contains posters concerning the disappearance of Anton Sokolov and the Pendleton twins (the future). Cinematically, it can be argued that, since these required the player to Blink onto various islands (that weren't connected), the Outsider recognizes that time is fragmented and so doesn't exist boundlessly as Time. It also supports the fact that, while he has some foreknowledge, it isn't accurate since there were two outcomes for the Pendleton twins. One could summarize and say that the Outsider knows the future as broad brush strokes, that he knew that the Pendleton twins would be neutralized, but it is the details, that he did not know their exact fates, that are incapable to being discerned from his limited omniscience.  
  


     The Outsider has professed to being bored multiple times and stated that he hopes that his Marked chosen will be entertaining. If boredom is taken to mean the inability to be entertained, then it could be assumed that the Outsider is bored due to his own omniscience. If he knows all actualities and possibilities, the transitive future related to the present is without any uncertainty and thus any entertainment. In mortal terms, it would be as if one has already watched all the movies, read all the books, known all the outcomes and thus been derived the satisfaction of suspense before the big reveal. For a divine being however, this implies that everything is more or less inevitable and that, although there are different paths that can be taken, the future is already known.

 

     The only time change would ever be really possible would be for a god, someone who already exists outside of time, to change parts of the current transitive present. This change would bring about certain ineffable repercussions. The Outsider seems to engender this change through Marking certain 'interesting' people. The changes that the Marked cause operate outside of the Outsider's omniscience, and the Outsider has intimated ignorance following the player's choices. Thus, it is through the Outsider's few chosen that he is able to amuse himself.

 

References:

 

Borland, T. Omniscience and divine foreknowledge. _Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy._

[     http://www.iep.utm.edu/omnisci/print ](http://www.iep.utm.edu/omnisci/print)

 

 

Outsider dialogues: <http://dishonored.wikia.com/wiki/Outsider_Shrines/Speeches>

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As a corollary: the Outsider is the divine equivalent of fan, throwing his favorite characters into absurd situations or giving them magical powers and then seeing what they will do.


End file.
